Commissioners pushed President Preckwinkle’s Chief of Staff Brian Hamer and Budget Director Tanya Anthony yesterday to explain certain staffing and raises in the President’s Office, bringing up cuts some commissioners’ had made, but others hadn’t. Comm. Robert Steele (D-2) singled out a press position within the President’s Office that appeared to have a $40,000 jump in salary, demanding an explanation. It’s the second salary conversation in as many days, with complaints that the budget books don’t tell the full story of how commissioners’ offices spend their money.  

Recorder of Deeds Karen Yarbrough, the subject of an upcoming binding ballot referendum that threatens the existence of her office, sat for a brief budget hearing Wednesday morning, as did Cook County Democratic Party Chairman and Assessor Joe Berrios.

Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago says a long-running discrimination lawsuit against the department’s hiring practices has “really put us behind the eight ball” in terms of keeping up with attrition rates. Santiago made the comments at an hour long hearing on his department’s proposed budget for 2017, which is seeing an $8.9 million increase over 2016.

Chicago’s plan to update its emergency radio system is expected to cost about $40 million over the next five years, and a current contract with Motorola is insufficient to cover the full implementation of the upgrade, Office of Emergency Management staff told aldermen Wednesday. The upgrade would encrypt all calls over the city’s emergency dispatch system, preventing people from listening in through a police scanner.

The disclosure was made during a nearly three-hour hearing with the new head of the city’s Office of Emergency Management, Commissioner Alicia Tate-Nadeau, as she mainly fielded questions from aldermen about long response times for 911 calls, modernization plans for the city’s 311 system, as well as personal anecdotes from aldermen who are irritated with a plan from last year to move crossing guards from the police department to OEMC.

The Department of Human Resources has made minimal gains in minority hiring over the past year, several Black and Latino aldermen complained Wednesday. Both groups also raised skepticism that a new Chief Diversity Officer would improve those numbers. Efforts to broaden diversity among the Chicago Police Department’s new pool of recruits over the next two years were also called into question at a two hour hearing on DHR Commissioner Soo Choi’s proposed $7.2 million dollar budget.

Aldermen alternated between pleading for additional inspectors and thanking the leadership of the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP) for their assistance, as a supermajority of Council members attended the the budget hearing for one of the city agencies they interact with most. Commissioner Maria Guerra Lapacek, now in her third year, heard few challenging comments from aldermen, as they called for adding vice inspectors in evenings and weekends and gently enquired about planning for the new city Airbnb licensing program set to begin December 15.

The Cook County health system’s $1.8 billion budget was Tuesday’s final hearing, and one of the longest. While the county plans to allocate just $111 million in taxpayer dollars to the system, a 77% reduction since 2009, public health remains one of the county’s biggest responsibilities, alongside public safety. Cook County Health and Hospitals System (CCHHS) CEO Dr. Jay Shannon read from a nine page statement, outlining the challenges facing the county’s health network, including competition from other hospitals, changing patient needs, and aging facilities.

Cook County Transportation and Highways Superintendent John Yonan won praise from commissioners during his first of two planned hearings this week, in which he detailed his plan to allocate $500,000 to each commissioner for local infrastructure projects, intended to leverage federal dollars for larger scale projects guided by the department. Another added, unspoken benefit: currying favor with local mayors, managers, and aldermen by bringing what commissioners joked was, and wasn’t, “pork”.  

What promised to be an already lengthy hearing into the Department of Animal Care and Control went much longer when a group of about a dozen veterans interrupted the hearing, demanding to know why the Veterans Affairs Commission didn’t have a bigger budget, and why it had been moved under a different department.

Cook County’s Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Ponni Arunkumar defended her department’s plans to lay off 18 employees in the county’s toxicology lab at Tuesday’s morning hearing, which she argued would save more than $1 million on salaries, equipment, and testing costs, while also maintaining one of the county’s coveted accreditations. The department’s proposed budget for 2017 is $13.6 million.

Aldermen spent a majority of the Police Board’s budget hearing late Tuesday afternoon questioning Board President Lori Lightfoot how the new police oversight systems will impact her board’s work. The Police Board reviews disciplinary requests and recommends action against officers accused of serious misconduct.

With the presidential election three weeks away and early voting underway since September 29, the Board of Elections Commissioners spent their testimony updating aldermen on registration numbers and planned voter information campaigns at their roughly 40 minute hearing Tuesday. And it was not without some sarcasm regarding Chicago’s history of voter fraud and questions about one presidential candidate's claim of this year's “rigged election.”

Modernization of the city’s outdated 311 system will include a cloud based software that’ll automatically update regularly like a cell phone operating system, Department of Innovation and Technology Commissioner Brenna Berman told aldermen Tuesday.

Commissioners got a broad overview of Cook County’s finances and spending plans in the first day of two weeks of budget hearings Monday morning. County Chief Financial Officer Ivan Samstein led testimony for the Bureau of Finance for nearly four hours, outlining the county’s $4.4 billion budget, getting into the minutiae of President Preckwinkle’s proposed sweetened beverage tax, and into a minor tiff with Comm. Bridget Gainer (D-10) over tax collection.  

Cook County Highways and Transportation Commissioner John Yonan will testify about his department’s budget Tuesday morning, including some details about a new initiative that would give each commissioner $500,000 to contribute to capital projects like roads, bridges, and pedestrian and bike-friendly fixes in each district. While the program sounds similar to Chicago’s menu program program (which gives each alderman about $1.3 million to spend on infrastructure projects like speed bumps, play lots, and street lighting from a pre-approved list), Yonan, a 19-year veteran of the Chicago Department of Transportation, says this program could be leveraged to do much more.